Comment Threads

I've sometimes wondered if the rise in word count was also driven by the rise of the word processor ... Yes, that's definitely driven word counts up; an editor of my acquaintance says submitted manuscripts bloated by around 20% during the 1980s, and it was very visibly associated with manuscripts that came off a word processor (which can be distinguished from ones off an electric typewriter -- margins and headers/footers are more consistent, for one thing)....

I'm afraid Mr Korogodski's advocacy of foreign printers tells only a misleading part of the story. Here's where my experience on the Dark Side of the Editorial Desk doing textbooks and academic works comes in handy. In no particular order: (1) It's all well and good to advocate for overseas printing, now that § 15 of the 1909 Copyright Act would no longer forfeit the US copyright of those books. But when you make cost comparisons, you must factor in shipping costs... and they're not inconsiderable. (2) Then, too, there are delay problems. Doing a short- to mid- run (that...

You know, you might consider taking a look at some of the fiction writing circles that exist on-line. Some of them go all the way back into the 1980s. I did a series of columns on some of them in fact: http://teleread.org/categories/paleo-e-books The lack of minimum or maximum length limitations led to a good deal of experimentation and different forms. There are some serialized stories where the writers post episodes as they write them; there are some collaborative shared universes where people write stories set in an on-going shared space. Interesting stuff....

Novellas are doing quite nicely in the erotic romance ebook sector, thank you. Both for the readers and for the writers, as far as I can tell from the anecdata. Some readers don't like them, but other readers say that being able to buy reasonably priced novellas for a quick read that has more depth than a short story is one of the biggest boons of ebooks. One major reason why I keep sending my manuscripts to my current publisher is that my natural length appears to be 25-60 kwords, and there simply aren't many print markets for that length....

There's more than one kind of sewn binding. The "high end" sewn binding — often referred to as "Smyth-sewn," although that's one particular type — has a little bit of glue to help hold the threads in place (it's not "stitching"; that's what you call the staple-thingies on certain thin publications like Time or The Economist), but the glue is not a structural feature. However, these types of fully sewn bindings are very labor intensive. Next down the scale is a compromise, and the most common type of "sewn" binding in a general trade book. There are more different trade...